


Beautiful Pain

by Gadhar



Category: The Expendables (Movies)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-11-19
Updated: 2015-11-29
Packaged: 2018-05-02 10:33:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 4,912
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5245043
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gadhar/pseuds/Gadhar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>D: I own nothing</p>
    </blockquote>





	1. I can feel the heat rising

**Author's Note:**

> D: I own nothing

In eight weeks he lost his life. 

Eight weeks where he was stripped of all those things that make a person a person; family, country, job, name, sense of peace, sense of mind, sense of self. 

The odd thing is that he can still remember everything. Generally, when one loses something, they can’t remember where they lost it, or how. He can. He can remember every vivid detail like he lives it every day and in most ways he does. 

The daylight is streaked with the memories of corpses burning and the sun on his flesh feels like electricity that is not at all pleasant. At night, when darkness descends and he’s left even more alone with himself and his thoughts and distractions are not as easily reachable outside of the cellphone that doesn’t work after he threw it against the wall, the sheets feel like hands grabbing at him, sounds of the evening like coming danger. 

He sleeps with the curtains open but he’s not sure it makes much difference now. There are lamps that are turned on as well and somehow it’s made it worse, like night and day at the same time and there is no reprieve from things he would like to call nightmares. Things he would like to call, yes, but cannot because they are far too real and they’re not distant enough to be memories.

He remembers everything he lost and that makes him question whether or not he has truly lost anything or if they are simply things that exist in the past. Exist in the scars on his skin and the voice in his head and that struggle in his chest that takes his breath away at times. 

Exist in the way that demons do, leaving wounds and keeping the cuts from scabbing over so that when one is left alone, screaming in a corner, they can blame it on the fresh line of salt that’s wormed its way through the cuts and cracks and giant fissures that layer their bodies.

And then he wonders what exactly the word past means. As though where he lives now is the present and not the past, and the coming tomorrow the future, but if you know what all three entail how is one different from the other? If the past was full of betrayal and abandonment and finished in loneliness and today is much the same, he does not understand how tomorrow will be any different.

He doesn’t understand how to _make_ tomorrow different.

He doesn’t understand why it needs to be different either.


	2. Everything is on fire

Her name is Veronica and she serves him tea every day at the coffee shop that’s exactly three doors down from his apartment. Veronica is English, like himself, but she’s not aware of what went on in the country behind the flag and the royal uniforms. She is not aware of what he himself is. She came to the states two years ago and has worked in this shop ever since, paying her way through college. 

“Here you go, Lee.” Veronica slides a mug in front of him. The smell of real Earl Grey is heavenly against the smell of smog and trash that breaches the diner despite the line of air fresheners over every window and door.

She is the only one that knows his first name, he thinks. What has become his name at least. He doesn’t quite remember what his name used to be which is odd considering he remembers everything else but he decided long ago that the lack of memory is because he did not—does not—matter, what happened does but he’s not sure how or why. 

She is also the only person he’s met that knows how to properly sweeten his tea. She does it even better than himself and he’s not sure if that’s because he’s forgotten how to make tea the way he likes or if it’s true that everything taste better when someone else makes it for you.

“Thank you, darling.”

Veronica smiles the same small smile she does every day at this exact same time. 6:45 a.m. every weekday after an hour and a half run. She has class at nine and she tells him he starts her day off well though he has no idea why. 

Veronica slips away to another customer and Lee is left alone once again but he doesn’t mind. Here he does not mind at all. It is quiet enough that sounds do not twist and morph their way into his memories and it’s just small enough that he nearly forgets how big the world is, how small he is. 

He sips at his tea and doodles on the napkin with the pen Veronica lets him borrow when he comes here. There are intersecting lines and circles and sometimes there are simplistic pictures—like the emblem that used to ride the patch on his beret, or the star this mother used to trace into the palm of his hand. 

One time he had drawn out the tattoo he has on his chest. He cannot remember why his hand had drawn those lines or curves but they had and Lee had felt an intense sense of shame and guilt at the final product. 

Veronica thought it was beautiful so he let her keep the doodle. He throws them all out anyway.

By the time he finishes his tea it’s 7:30. He leaves the shop and goes about the rest of the day. He shops for necessities, the barest of them, and then he spends time in his apartment pacing the floors and thinking. At times he will try and go through all the Asian arts he learned so along ago but these days he can never calm the storm within him so he reverts to brute strength, lifting weights and punching heavy bags. He does this at the gym that’s down the street, opposite direction of the coffee house. It is six doors down from him and is an old building, smelling of mold and sweat and it creaks as though it had never truly settled into its foundation. 

When he goes home again he sleeps. It’s not nice but it’s better than nothing and he has found that it’s easier with the hard floor at his back and the sound of cars outside. Occasionally there’s a bird chirping, one kind or another, and their song is screeching and irritating but it keeps the demons away. Perhaps even demons cannot stand to be irritated by horrible music. 

He wakes in the night and watches TV. Movies he never got to see in the service, series he never finished. He paces the floor until he forgets his own name, this new one he has chosen for himself, and he forgets how to breathe and he’s just pacing. Five steps one way and then turn around, six steps the other. It’s uneven and it bothers him but the floor is not evenly divided and he decided that dealing with uneven floors was better than dealing with uneven scars. 

He showers quickly, ten minutes tops with the chill of water keeping him in the here and now and then paces again, waiting. When the blackness comes, he lets it. He learned to stop fighting it and instead focus on enduring it. Each night he tests himself on how long he can hold out against them. His past. His present. His future. It’s usually not very long but he takes some satisfaction in having it always be a few seconds longer than the last time. Now he can last almost a whole hour, near asleep with no fear under his skin.

But he is so exhausted most days, so tired. He eventually loses, gives up and withdraws into the corner, well within the reach of demons though most times they rather tease him than anything else. His hand slides over the scars under his shirt, his thumb over the one on his wrist and he remembers the things they did to him—the things he did to himself—and he spends the rest of the night shaking and sweating.

It has been eight months since he lost his life and he has yet to find a new one. He suspects he will not. He suspects Lee Christmas will die an old man, trembling in the corner of his rat-infested apartment and he cannot bring himself to care.


	3. Today is a Painful Reminder of Why

Tool is someone he meets when he moves to New Orleans. Veronica has gone on to grad school and Lee felt no other ties to New York so here he is, spending his nights on the infamous Bourbon Street though it’s generally too cheery and wired for his tastes and he has long since stopped going there and has, instead, gone to Tool’s. 

Tool is a kind man, in a dark sort of way. Lee feels an odd kinship to him, like a kindred spirit and the feeling only intensifies when Tool tells him that if he ever needs anything to call him. Because Tool had lost his life too and he understands where Lee is right now.

Lee’s not sure how much he believes Tool, the man has no reason to lie to him but Lee feels so broken and not human most days that he cannot fathom how anyone who went through what he did could be where Tool is at; smiling, happy and successful, even if it is in a simple bar on a simple road living a simple life painting and tattooing. 

He asks if Lee has any ink and Lee tells him no, because he doesn’t. The tattoo on his chest is not his, could not be his and never will be and though he knows why the man he used to be got it, he feels guilt that it is on his own skin and not the person before him. He also realizes the impossibility of this but he has no other way to explain it.

Tool then talks about things he could mark Lee up with; tattoos of geometric designs similar to the ones Lee used to scribble on napkins, marks of queen and country and the enthusiasm Tool has makes Lee smile. It is small and shaky and not entirely real but it’s the best he’s managed since New York and Tool does not seem to notice. 

Lee rearranges his schedule around Tool as he slowly gets pulled into the man’s world. The bar becomes his sort of scene and he spends a lot of time in the garage working on bikes for Tool or watching him needle designs into people’s skin. He hangs in the shadows and keeps quiet despite Tool’s constant efforts to hook him up with the many girls that smile at Lee when they see him. He appreciates Tool’s efforts but he’s not sure how to explain to Tool, much less a girl, how he cannot be a person in a relationship when he cannot even succeed in being a person. 

He is a wall fixture, simple like a candleholder and just as practical, only one use. For Tool he fixes bikes and he looks after the shop and this is him and this is what he does and he is okay with that. He spends his nights here and his mornings locked up in his apartment and not much has changed from New York but he considers New Orleans better.

And sometimes he has to tell himself that multiple times to really believe it. Other nights he only has to say it once.


	4. We Can Only Get Brighter

Tool manages to get his past out of him. It happens in broad daylight when Lee’s working on a bike and there is a chorus of engines and smoke from a group of motorcycles that pull into the shop. One minute there is a wrench in his hand, a Ducati torn apart on his table and the next he’s not holding anything, his arms tied to his sides and there’s someone screaming and it takes him a minute to realize it’s himself.

He’s not sure what exactly happens. To the wrench he was holding or the Ducati or even the ropes that were tying his arms but the next thing he sees is Tool’s face. Lee’s on the ground, choking on air and his chest is burning and Tool’s grabbing his face and shouting his name.

They sit on the leather couch that smells like cigars. It’s on the floor above the bar and the walls are covered in stencils and sketches and paintings. Tool doesn’t ask for everything, in fact his questions are more like statements and Lee’s left nodding his head yes or no and he’s grateful for that because it’s the only thing he can manage right now.   
He’s not had a flashback like that in a while, not in the presence of others, in the presence of society under the weight of the world’s eyes. He wants to say he feels shameful or scared but mostly he just feels numb and exhausted and Tool makes him sleep on the couch that night. Tool covers him in a blanket and sits on the stool not too far away, back towards Lee as he sketches what will no doubt be another decoration for the wall and Lee noses at the pillow under his head. The cigar smell is even heavier here and it calms him enough that when he thinks of all those motorcycles and their engines he does not worry about whom they are or what happened and the sleep he falls into is less festered with nightmares than usual.

In the morning he wakes to the sound of voices. They’re soft and distant, quiet under what Lee assumes is normal garage sounds. 

He feels weirdly refreshed, relieved almost; like today is just that little bit brighter and the feeling itself kind of blindsides him because he can’t remember the last time he felt—hell can’t remember if he ever felt—this way because it’s so different from that bone-tired emotional exhaustion he’s used too and part of him is wondering what kind of dreamland he’s waking up to. 

He lays there for a few moments and he can still smell the cigars, it’s almost like it’s stronger now, like the warmth of daylight brings it out and Lee can already guess—judging by the heat and how the sun’s already glaring through the nearest window—that it’s noon at the least, late afternoon at the most, and he’s slept most the day away. 

It’s almost a sin, he thinks, to leave a comfortable couch and the comfortable feeling he has because he knows it won’t last; knows, even, that he probably won’t make it a few steps without that same weight hanging over his head, cracking the blades of his shoulders. But he learned when he was a kid that you couldn’t just wait around for things to happen, you had to fight; in some way, some form, because life wasn’t going to stop kicking your ass any other way.

He stands and waits until he feels steady, the shakiness still in his knees and he wonders why he feels like someone shook him up like a fucking margarita shaker. And then he thinks he could go for some hard liquor to keep him standing.

He pretends he doesn’t nearly fall down the stairs but when he reaches the bottom, Tool’s already walking towards him and the talking have stopped. Back at the bar there’s someone standing, presumably whoever Tool was talking to, smoking a cigar. 

“You alright there brother?”

“Yeah.” Lee waves off the steadying hand but when he stumbles again he gets it anyway and he decides it’s not worth fighting over. “Just tired.”

“Maybe you should get some more sleep.”

“No.” He leaves it at that, partly because he knows Tool won’t argue with him, he never has, and partly because Lee’s more interested in the guy at the bar. He can’t see anything from here but a silhouette and the way the cigar smoke curls around him like a cloak. 

“Hey, you listening to me Christmas?”

“What? Oh yeah.”

Tool’s face is wholly unimpressed but there’s no irritation that Lee can see, only vaguely hidden concern and that’s been Tool’s default look since Lee met him. “Yeah sure, alright.”

He half drags Lee towards the bar and Lee supposes it’s a good thing since he’s still half on cloud nine and when he sits down, blinking through the smoke, he can smell it again, the cigars that were steeped in the fabric of the couch and he supposes this guy may be the cause, he definitely fills the room as though he lives here, blends in like he’s almost part of the wall but he still takes over somehow.

The look he fixes Lee with is heavy and calculating, sizing Lee up. It makes his face hot and he regrets not staying on the sofa. 

“Quit posturing Barney, kid’s not threatening your territory.”

Barney snorts, pulling another drag off the cigar. “Kid looks half dead Tool, I don’t need to posture.”

The voice is what gets him. It’s rough, deep, grating on his skin even as the coldness in it drenches him. He thinks he can feel it in his gut, a kind of soft punch to his solar plexus. 

“Barney.”

Barney shrugs, places the cigar back into his mouth. “You’re the one who wanted him on the team. But he can barely hold himself up much less run a mission.”

“Mission?”

They both ignore him and he’s so used to that feeling—of being ignored and unimportant—that it doesn’t really register as anything different. He supposes he was never really part of the conversation to begin with. It started without him and he’s only here because he had bad timing waking up. He’s closer to a fly on the wall, steady and quiet and unnoticed, easily removed with a swatter; death in under a day.

Tool talks to him later, after Barney’s left—though the smoke still clings to the air and to Lee. He talks about how Barney has a team of mercenaries, all former military like Lee, all half-crazy if not full-on psycho, like Lee. It’s a team that Tool thinks he should join.

Lee doesn’t think it’s such a good idea and he repeats Barney’s words back to Tool; he doesn’t just look half-dead, he is. 

The way Tool stiffens has Lee ready for a punch that never comes and he doesn’t know why he’s suddenly so on edge around Tool; Tool who was one of two people to treat him like a person and leave him at ease and now…

His mind conjures up this Barney character with his smoke cloak and smoky gaze and presence that’s firm like waves that wash up Lee’s skin and he shudders. “I’m sorry,” is all he says and Tool’s hand slides along the back of his neck and they go back upstairs to the cigar-smelling couch and he learns all about the Expendables.


	5. The Further You Put it Behind You

It has been one year, two months and eight days and Lee still cannot figure out where he belongs within the Expendables. 

He is twenty nine years old and the guys all call him a kid like he has somehow yet to make it past puberty. But when it comes to being in the field they all listen to him. 

Lee does not understand this. Why they choose to listen to him that is. He is young, he is new, and he can admit to not having the years of experience that these other men do. 

More startlingly is the fact that he can’t quite remember when he took up a leadership position either. 

It is somewhere in South Africa, in a country Lee can’t remember the name of, where he first realizes his power over the others. 

It’s also the first time he gets blown out of a building by an RPG. 

There is an ambush and that is how things start to fall apart. The Expendables are a good outfit, adaptable, but they’re a group of hot-headed time bombs that have their fuses lit the minute the only calming force in the room goes down. 

Barney takes a shot to the vest and the way his body lands makes Lee think he’s dead, limbs at odd angles and unmoving. 

When he doesn’t get back up the other guys decide the plan isn’t worth following and they move to their exit strategy which is nothing but trying to blast their way out of the enemy compound. 

They’re arguing, but Lee’s on the other side of the room with Barney Ross and he can’t make out what they’re saying over the gunfire and explosions and the comms do nothing but screech interference. 

He’s hunkered behind what used to be a wall, blinking between images of Ross’ body and desert sand blowing over corpses. Ross’ empty eyes and the trickle of blood down the center of a teammate’s forehead. 

His chest tightens, vision whiting out and he feels something shift inside him as he sucks in a sharp breath.

Then he’s sprinting over to Ross, grabbing him under the arms and dragging him towards the closet window. They’ll jump. It’s dumb and stupid and someone’s going to break their leg on the way down but he can’t reach the guys with gunfire in between them, certainly not dragging around 170 lbs of weight. 

So it’s the window and when he gets there by some fucked up Hollywood magic there’s an awning below them, probably used to hang over some fruit stand before the insurgents took over the building. 

Lee drags Barney’s body and pushes it out the window, wondering how much shit he’ll get for it later assuming they survive. 

He’s getting ready to jump when the RPG comes; missile blasting into the wall next to him and then he’s falling.

Barney’s got a lot of lost bruises and the bullet pierced his vest but was slowed enough it didn’t go too deep into his chest. He’s out of the hospital within days, despite doctors wanting him to stay a week.

Lee had his side burnt in the explosion, but the armor protected him enough that a few skin grafts later he’s mostly okay and there’s hardly any real scarring. 

He hears all this from Tool, two weeks later, laid up in a hospital bed, wondering why he remembers screaming in the night, some strange incessant beeping in his ear under the screams, and arms holding him. 

Lee remembers that pretty well, despite it only being a second of a memory, despite Tool’s assurances that he’s been told everything that’s happened. Lee remembers those arms and he remembers that night. It was dark and he had been alone and it was an experience he rather never have repeated.


	6. But Right Now I'm On the Inside

He goes home to his empty apartment and the intense feeling of emptiness is suffocating; a sharp pain under his ribcage. 

Lee’s side is still sore and every time he twists a certain way he thinks about Barney’s mangled body on the concrete of that compound, unmoving. 

He still hasn’t seen Barney and though he knows the man’s alive, until he sees the proof with his own eyes, the images won’t stop. 

Even then they probably won’t and Lee can count the experience as yet another one burned into his memory. 

Another body to add on to the ever-growing count; just when he thought he was going to get away from this shit. He’s been dragged back in and he let it happen. Lee can’t honestly say he was doing everything he could to move forward, but he hadn’t been going backwards, maybe off to the side but at least he was fucking _moving_ and now he’s just slipping back into the darkness and it makes him wonder if he actually ever managed to leave or if he was stupid to think himself so lucky.

He was probably stupid, it would fit. He’s got a running record to back that up. 

The next morning there’s a knock and Lee stares in the direction of the door. The TV has long become just this constant murmur full of sounds he cannot decipher and the knock had blended in with that until becoming more insistent and even then, it takes a while for Lee to get his body to move. 

Lee opens the door to Barney’s face, nose wrinkled and eyes squinting. “Jesus, you smell like a fucking still.”

He doesn’t have a response to that so Lee just shifts his shoulder to lean against the doorframe. There’s a slew of empty bottles behind him in the living room and he counts himself lucky that Barney hasn’t seen them yet.

“You gonna let me in?”

Lee wants to say _no._ One because how fucking dare this random fuck think he has some sort of right to Lee’s place, shithole that it is and two- _I thought you fucking died and you didn’t bother to come around until fucking now fuck you whatever happened to looking after your fucking team?_

Barney just shoves him aside anyway, stepping into the house with no concern and Lee sees the way his shoulders draw up and he waits for some sort of outburst wondering if last night’s binge is going to get him kicked off the team. He wouldn’t be surprised. He’d kick off someone this fucked up. Hell, he never would’ve let someone like himself on a team to begin and Tool’s the only reason he’s made it this far so there’s really nothing stopping Barney anymore. 

Barney’s at the mantle, finger running through the coat of dust and Lee can’t help thinking the man’s judging his cleaning skills now, it’s not like he’s a damn _maid._ “It hurt still?”

It’s not what Lee’s expecting and so the question doesn’t really register with him. He ends ups staring at Barney for a full five seconds before there’s a motion towards Barney’s side and Lee realizes he’s talking about the burn and his hand goes to it in some vain attempt at protecting it from god only knows. “You care?”

“Way Tool talks you’re some kind of little innocent pup but you’re really kind of an asshole you know that?”

“Fuck you.”

“Keep dreamin’ kid.”

His breath leaves him after that. Thoughts of him and thoughts of Barney and things that he hadn’t thought of before but now _Jesus Christ what’s wrong with him? And where the fuck does Barney get off with that shit?_

“So, it hurt?”

Lee shakes his head at the topic change. Blames everything on being tired, hungover, and maybe a little horny and decides he’s not going to try and figure out what Barney wants he’s just going to stop caring. “Nothing serious.”

“But it hurts?”

 _Persistent fucker._ The truth is it hurts like a motherfucker. He left the pills at the doc’s because they didn’t believe him when he said he and morphine don’t get along and he’s not about to waste money when he’s got a bottle of ibuprofen and alcohol. 

He’s not sure what Barney’s trying to get at though. If he’s gauging the damage in an effort to come up with some bullshit to kick Lee off the team or bench him at the least, or he actually wants to know and in either case Lee has no desire to look like a pussy. 

Especially in this. This is physical and he can handle physical, the kind of stuff that digs at his skin and his bones he can shrug off and step forward. It’s the shit at night, the things that pierce his heart and leave him breathless, things that leave him ravaged on the inside, that kind of stuff leaves him the mess he is now and he’s not about to let Barney know that. 

“Do you want something?” 

Barney’s eyes narrow at the clipped tone and Lee can see his mind working, that same measuring gaze looking Lee up and down like he’s sizing him up again. Like they’re back at Tool’s bar over a year ago and Lee knows he isn’t much better off now but he ain’t a fucking walking corpse and he’s content enough with that. 

Barney shoves his hands into the pockets of his leather jacket, nodding stiffly as he gives Lee’s little room another once-over. There’s a lot of things in his eyes Lee can’t read, muddled expressions on his face that act like shutters to his thoughts and Lee can’t remember the last time he met someone that wasn’t at least a little transparent. “Nah, just checking in.”

And he doesn’t know why he has to push the issue, why he’s got to question things. Barney’s already halfway to the door and Lee could honestly just drop it now but he’s always been stubborn and he grabs Barney’s bicep as he tries to step past, the touch making memories flash but he tamps them back down quick enough to keep his voice even. “You could’ve checked in over the phone, or through Tool. Hell, you could’ve been at the fucking hospital.”

Barney’s face turns away and Lee could be wrong but that looked like a _flinch,_ his accusing tone keeping the air tense and it’s a long time before Barney answers him.


End file.
